News

Main points:-

* Local authorities must offer direct payments to older people on discharge from hospital

* All assessments of older people must be completed within one month after contact is made within 48 hours, and equipment provided within a week

* Obligatory room size standards for all care homes abandoned

The government is injecting £1 billion a year into older people’s services to improve choice, increase independence, and tackle delayed discharge, health secretary Alan Milburn told the House of Commons, writes Derren Hayes.

At the heart of the reforms are plans to give all older people the choice of receiving direct payments to enable them to pay for their own care.

"We will make it an obligation on every local authority to offer older people access to direct payments," Milburn said. "I believe this reform will empower older people, their families and their carers in a way that has never been possible before."

Milburn also promised faster access to services. By the end of 2004, all assessments will begin within 48 hours of first contact and will be completed within a month. All equipment needed will be in place within a week.

In addition, local authorities will be given more money to pay higher fees to care homes; £70 million will be made available to train social care staff; and the carers’ grant be will doubled to £185 million by 2006. There will be twice as many people receiving intensive help at home and a 50 per cent increase in the number of very sheltered housing places compared with 1997 levels.

Milburn also promised to legislate to make 70,000 additional rehabilitation packages and all intermediate care services free, whether provided by health or social services.

The extra funding is the detail behind the Chancellor’s budget pledge in April to invest an extra 6 per cent a year into social services for the next 3 years. Milburn described older people as the "principal beneficiaries" of the extra funding.

However, health minister Jacqui Smith confirmed that announcements on funding for children’s services would come later this year.

By the end of 2002, two-thirds of the new money for older people’s services will be ring-fenced, and will be given to local authorities as part of their standard spending assessment.

Milburn gave no details on how fines for social services that failed to meet delayed transfer targets would work, but said they would be introduced next April and be linked to the new reforms.

Finally, he announced that the government had reneged on plans to make the meeting of room size standards obligatory for all care homes. Smith said that instead homes would be expected to spell out to service-users whether they met the new standards or not.